Animal Farm

George Orwell

Character List

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Napoleon

From the very beginning of the novella, Napoleon emerges
as an utterly corrupt opportunist. Though always present at the
early meetings of the new state, Napoleon never makes a single contribution
to the revolution—not to the formulation of its ideology, not to the
bloody struggle that it necessitates, not to the new society’s initial
attempts to establish itself. He never shows interest in the strength
of Animal Farm itself, only in the strength of his power over it.
Thus, the only project he undertakes with enthusiasm is the training
of a litter of puppies. He doesn’t educate them for their own good
or for the good of all, however, but rather for his own good: they
become his own private army or secret police, a violent means by
which he imposes his will on others.

Although he is most directly modeled on the Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin, Napoleon represents, in a more general sense, the political
tyrants that have emerged throughout human history and with particular
frequency during the twentieth century. His namesake is not any
communist leader but the early-eighteenth-century French general
Napoleon, who betrayed the democratic principles on which he rode
to power, arguably becoming as great a despot as the aristocrats
whom he supplanted. It is a testament to Orwell’s acute political
intelligence and to the universality of his fable that Napoleon
can easily stand for any of the great dictators and political schemers
in world history, even those who arose after Animal Farm was
written. In the behavior of Napoleon and his henchmen, one can detect
the lying and bullying tactics of totalitarian leaders such as Josip
Tito, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Slobodan Milosevic
treated in sharply critical terms.

Snowball

Orwell’s stint in a Trotskyist battalion in the Spanish
Civil War—during which he first began plans for a critique of totalitarian
communism—influenced his relatively positive portrayal of Snowball. As
a parallel for Leon Trotsky, Snowball emerges as a fervent ideologue
who throws himself heart and soul into the attempt to spread Animalism
worldwide and to improve Animal Farm’s infrastructure. His idealism,
however, leads to his downfall. Relying only on the force of his
own logic and rhetorical skill to gain his influence, he proves
no match for Napoleon’s show of brute force.

Although Orwell depicts Snowball in a relatively appealing
light, he refrains from idealizing his character, making sure to
endow him with certain moral flaws. For example, Snowball basically
accepts the superiority of the pigs over the rest of the animals.
Moreover, his fervent, single-minded enthusiasm for grand projects
such as the windmill might have erupted into full-blown megalomaniac
despotism had he not been chased from Animal Farm. Indeed, Orwell
suggests that we cannot eliminate government corruption by electing principled
individuals to roles of power; he reminds us throughout the novella
that it is power itself that corrupts.

Boxer

The most sympathetically drawn character in the novel,
Boxer epitomizes all of the best qualities of the exploited working
classes: dedication, loyalty, and a huge capacity for labor. He
also, however, suffers from what Orwell saw as the working class’s
major weaknesses: a naïve trust in the good intentions of the intelligentsia
and an inability to recognize even the most blatant forms of political
corruption. Exploited by the pigs as much or more than he had been
by Mr. Jones, Boxer represents all of the invisible labor that undergirds the
political drama being carried out by the elites. Boxer’s pitiful death
at a glue factory dramatically illustrates the extent of the pigs’ betrayal.
It may also, however, speak to the specific significance of Boxer
himself: before being carted off, he serves as the force that holds
Animal Farm together.

Squealer

Throughout his career, Orwell explored how politicians
manipulate language in an age of mass media. In Animal Farm, the
silver-tongued pig Squealer abuses language to justify Napoleon’s
actions and policies to the proletariat by whatever means seem necessary. By
radically simplifying language—as when he teaches the sheep to bleat
“Four legs good, two legs better!”—he limits the terms of debate.
By complicating language unnecessarily, he confuses and intimidates the uneducated,
as when he explains that pigs, who are the “brainworkers” of the farm, consume milk
and apples not for pleasure, but for the good of their comrades. In this latter strategy,
he also employs jargon (“tactics, tactics”) as well as a baffling
vocabulary of false and impenetrable statistics, engendering in the
other animals both self-doubt and a sense of hopelessness about ever
accessing the truth without the pigs’ mediation. Squealer’s lack of
conscience and unwavering loyalty to his leader, alongside his rhetorical
skills, make him the perfect propagandist for any tyranny. Squealer’s
name also fits him well: squealing, of course, refers to a pig’s
typical form of vocalization, and Squealer’s speech defines him. At
the same time, to squeal also means to betray, aptly evoking Squealer’s
behavior with regard to his fellow animals.

Old Major

As a democratic socialist, Orwell had a great deal of
respect for Karl Marx, the German political economist, and even
for Vladimir Ilych Lenin, the Russian revolutionary leader. His
critique of Animal Farm has little to do with the Marxist ideology
underlying the Rebellion but rather with the perversion of that
ideology by later leaders. Major, who represents both Marx and Lenin,
serves as the source of the ideals that the animals continue to
uphold even after their pig leaders have betrayed them.

Though his portrayal of Old Major is largely positive,
Orwell does include a few small ironies that allow the reader to
question the venerable pig’s motives. For instance, in the midst
of his long litany of complaints about how the animals have been
treated by human beings, Old Major is forced to concede that his
own life has been long, full, and free from the terrors he has vividly
sketched for his rapt audience. He seems to have claimed a false
brotherhood with the other animals in order to garner their support
for his vision.

6. Which of the animals does most of the heavy labor and adopts the motto :Ï will work harder"? Boxer
7. Boxer, who believes that he has unintentionally killed a stable boy in the chaos, expresses his regret at taking a life, even though it is a human one. Snowball tells him not to feel guilty, asserting that “the only good human being is a dead one.”
8. After the banishment of Snowball, the animals learn that Napoleon supports the windmill project
9.The pigs begin living in the farmhouse, and rumor has it that they e... Read more→

I would have loved to see Snowball come back, apparently as would most people. But that is only while looking at the literal sense of the book. If you look at the book on a deeper level, when you notice the satire and allegory, you will see that Snowball had to leave and not come back, for he represents Leon Trotsky, a man who was driven out of Russia by Joseph Stalin (Napoleon).